The tawdry female bosses are tiresome, and we could do with more male fanservice.

[Roda]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the fish people weren't living in the dungeon were they? I had the impression they recently invaded the place to plunder it for creation magic blueprints. Hence the lack of any decorations, only a few barricades. Anyways the fish boobies weren't there to tell a story, jut to make the character easily identifiable, as a random fish person mother figure, not worth building anatomical lore around for its one scene.

My interpretation is, if they were just there to plunder and scram, why would they bring their brood mother there? And describing a character and their role is "telling a story." I just flat out disagree with your "worth" comment, not much else I can say on that.

We refer to them as male, because the english language is obsessed with referring to monstrous god figures with their genders, and because we're told their gender. But other than arbitrarily knowing their gender, it plays no role in their themes, thus, its not pushed in any other visual way.

Would it matter at all if you switched Bismarks gender? Does it matter what gender many of the regular nameless mobs we slay are? Would it matter or count if someone told us Cuchulainn is a female? My argument is, that in case of the more monstrous foes, many times we're just not told, and have to rely on visuals, and if it doesn't have any human-like feminine features, we presume its male.

Also... damn, just realized that only Garuda had a voice of the OG 3?

Idk if you know this, but we're agreeing on most of these points (though I wouldn't blame english for our culture's bias towards the masculine default), I just think that fish tiddies are as irrelevant to being a fish mom as a beard is on an opressive lizard dog thing.

And I'm not counting the ungendered monsters since we don't know, but I don't want to have to rely on the benefit of the doubt with "well they haven't saiiiiid that monster isn't a female" to inflate the monsterous-female count. If it's not explicitly or implicitly gendered, it's not counted into either list.

Tho it's legitimate to assume Cuchulainn is male buy default since he's named after an Irish legend (though, to the original topic, he should've been a very sexy man who is also mostly naked due to the mythical cuchulainn's story describing him as almost illegally hot)

Two things:

One - this thread has been pruned at least once in the last 24 hours, so keep that in mind people...

Two - To play devils advocate, arent you imposing your views of what a "Fish person" should be? That they need clutches, brood pups, and the like. Carrying things by the mouth, etc. These are your interpretations of what a fish person should be. Considering its a fantasy race and considering...

It's my observation of what fish are. And what the sahagin (or their AU counterparts) are. They lay eggs in clutches. It's how this game world works.

that we know some of the pre-existing beast tribe races are artificial races created by the Allag empire

Not counting on the unknown, and I'm gonna be mad if that twist gets used for "we just wanted to slap tiddies on it"

who is to say they would not have breasts or other modifiers we commonly relate to being female. Dont get me wrong, more variety in creature and race design would be interesting, just that I think the mental approach of "Well this is what an actual fish would do, so therefore fish people in FFXIV should do this" runs into the same issue as giving them boobs - giving characteristics to a fantasy race assuming they should operate like real life analogues. Youre just doing it from the other side of the spectrum, the animal side, not the humanoid side.

That's a really overly simplistic way to look at this. "Expecting things of fantasy races" isn't the problem. "Design shortcuts that have no functional use within the story itself" is the problem. Slapping fish tiddies on a fish mom who lays fish eggs and doesn't fish breastfeed is just as effective as slapping a pink t-shirt on her saying"♀#1♀Fish♀Mom♀" Though, I guess it isn't, because my first response to seeing her was "fish tiddies?" where if her room was decorated like some kind of horrific fish brood chamber it would be "OH GOD FISH MOM!" Like, if they were designed like the Ananta where there's obviously this line between person and animal, I'd be fine with it (in a different race 'cause having the males look like that and the females looking like mermades wouuuuld send me into a blood rage), but they aren't. That's all fish. And fish tiddies is jarring.

[Lauront]

If they want to do some skimpy attired male character, I'd like something like this guy from Octopath Traveler (yes, it's old school graphics but the style is the point), highlighting the male physique rather than just mirroring a feminine style, like Kuja:



The warrior in the dungeon is apparently a highlander, but hard to say much from just the screenshot.

A design like this from Dissidia would also rock:



I think Seymour pushes it as far as a male character can go whilst remaining to my tastes without looking feminine:



Who knows, maybe they'll go something like Adam and Eve with the final Nier raid.

On another note, there's quite a few monstrous females in the game, Garuda included, but more so than her there's beings like sahagin, amaljaa etc. where they just look the same as the males (mostly due to SE achieving a cost-saving this way), but some of the voidsent "belles" are also monstrous - even Calosfisteri, beautiful as she is, is monstrous. The Ursula type voidsent from Shisui no sato, and the likes of Echidna, are more clearly monstrous. In the end, I don't really care if they want to make the female monsters still somewhat beautiful. It's not like Byakko, or Zurvan, were not handsome in some ways, in spite of their monstrous guise.

[Roda]

Garuda

Naked lady, but feathers

but more so than her there's beings like sahagin, amaljaa etc. where they just look the same as the males (mostly due to SE achieving a cost-saving this way)

Mostly cool

Calosfisteri,

Naked sparkly hair lady

The Ursula type voidsent from Shisui no sato,

Mostly alright, still conventionally pretty face solid B design

Echidna,

The nakedest, and only butt in eorzea for a while

[Melichoir]

It's my observation of what fish are. And what the sahagin (or their AU counterparts) are. They lay eggs in clutches. It's how this game world works.

yes, and Im suggesting that your emphasis on their racial characterization is on the 'fish", not the human(oid) aspect, and are defining how they should be by what you consider fish to have. This doesnt even address that fish is short hand, or that not everything that lives in rivers and oceans are 'fish', so they could be more closely related to mammalia and we wouldnt know (after all we literally have things like platypus, whales, sea lions, and other creatures on earth here who dont quite fit into the basic characteristics we describe).

Youre doing the same thing as the creatives, just from 'the other direction'. A brood mother should be like x and y, cause real world and simplification of a concept.

Not counting on the unknown, and I'm gonna be mad if that twist gets used for "we just wanted to slap tiddies on it"

It's not unknown what I put in the spoiler texts. It specifies one species in particular but the quest plotline implies most (if not all) of them are under the same condition.

That's a really overly simplistic way to look at this. "Expecting things of fantasy races" isn't the problem. "Design shortcuts that have no functional use within the story itself" is the problem. Slapping fish tiddies on a fish mom who lays fish eggs and doesn't fish breastfeed is just as effective as slapping a pink t-shirt on her saying"♀#1♀Fish♀Mom♀" Though, I guess it isn't, because my first response to seeing her was "fish tiddies?" where if her room was decorated like some kind of horrific fish brood chamber it would be "OH GOD FISH MOM!" Like, if they were designed like the Ananta where there's obviously this line between person and animal, I'd be fine with it (in a different race 'cause having the males look like that and the females looking like mermades wouuuuld send me into a blood rage), but they aren't. That's all fish. And fish tiddies is jarring.

You can pretty much break down everything to a 'design' short cut depending on how you classify it. Want to quickly establish a character is threatening or menacing - give them spiking or pointed armor or clothing that evokes such.

You want to quickly establish a female, well, in human terms, things like breasts do it quickly particularly on humanoids. Furthermore, you actually dont know what the biology is or how they function reproductively. What little we know has been extremely simplistic and describe in quick terms to get a basic point across. We didnt sit down and have a lesson on "This is the reproductive and mating procedures of sagahagin."

In fact, going back to my initial point - the fact that you consider a horrific brood chamber to be the hallmarks of a 'fish mom' is how you personally interpret how it should look, which is a subjective thing. Fish reproduce in a variety of ways, and having some horrific chamber filled with nothing but eggs like a kind of hive is what you think ti should be like. How do you know it wouldnt have neetly deposited eggs, or what those eggs would even look like, or instead of eggs in piles, you have spawning pools that are hidden from view. Perhaps eggs are depositied underwater so you wouldnt even see them at all.

But the thing you did was went to fish boobs. To give you another perspective, albeit anecdotal, I literally didnt realize she had breasts until a month ago, and Ive been doing that in roulettes since it came out. I never noticed it on the design, and knew she was female because we were told so in character dialogue, which short of knowing the exact anatomy of a species or relying on short hands, is pretty much best you can ask for.

Its a matter of preference and perspective in regards to this. design choices you either do or dont approve of. An antichamber filled with oozing eggs and something out of a horror movie is cliche to me. It would get your point across, sure, but its also been done to death.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

Two - To play devils advocate, arent you imposing your views of what a "Fish person" should be? That they need clutches, brood pups, and the like. Carrying things by the mouth, etc. These are your interpretations of what a fish person should be. Considering its a fantasy race and considering...

Generally we have to rely on the cues given from the creator, SE in this case- and considering their appearance and behaviours most of the beastmen tend to fall more heavily on their 'beast' sides than the man sides. That might not always be the case, but it would be most logical just from what we've been given information wise from SE that beast men are beasts with a manlike shape- while non beastmen like the hrothgar, miquote, viera are humans with some beastlike features and in general would have more humanoid biology.

The sahagin's story revolving around their clutch and spawning grounds only reinforces that they are more fish than man. The way they're presented makes the unknown things a 'safe assumption' since it's largely implied they work that way. SE can of course make exceptions, but unless they specifically do it's far more logical to use the cues they've given us to make assumptions to fill in the blanks, rather than to go in the face of what they've given us and make up things without anything to back it up. I think the separation between 'beast races' and 'humanoid races' is something SE has established intentionally.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

I don't agree that SE lacks 'tawdry males' as the OP says. If anything I think this game has some of the best variety in both male and females. The garleans will always provide heavily armoured villains, male and female. You have fully clothed, albeit still seductive villains like Yotsuyu, Tsukoyomi. Eikons have a wide variety of body types and clothing styles. Shiva, Sophia and garuda are scanty, but so are ifrit and titan. In both cases you have near naked, highly attractive males and females following the generally accepted norms for beauty (lithe, curved females and muscular, imposing males). For clothed you have Lakshmi, Titania, Ramuh.

There's also pretty boys, like Omega and Alphinaud (clothed), final Kefka (near naked)- and a large selection of ascians and garleans who are overly handsome, plus a wealth of highly unclothed potential future bosses when they draw from previous final fantasies.

And then, there's also a large number of 'ugly' bosses and characters. I can see the argument that there's more feminine clothing and scantily dressed females than there are males, but I don't see how that's a problem when the variety is still clearly there, and for everyone from bosses to allies to our own available glamours. If you want to be fully armoured or wear an outfit that shows no skin as a female, you have numerous options- if you want to be hardly dressed as a male, you have numerous options. I'm sure males do have more full armour choices of course- but I'm also quite certain that more males are using those options, and on the flip I'm certain there's a more sizable number of females using more revealing outfits than males. In that sense I think SE has done this perfectly- both taking the majority's desire into account by providing a great amount of options for them, while still providing choice for the more niche aesthetic desires.

[Crushnight]

The fish boobies were a visual clue to the people who have no interests in story/lore that show it was a female monster and not another Genbu. The fish boobies become redundant if you do pay attention to anything regarding the story.

I'm in the camp of why give her boobies, but I have a friend who recently went through the dungeon who has skipped all story (makes any talk about it one sided and bore us both but gameplay we do talk for ages) say (jokingly) "she was hot", to which I replied "you knew it was a female O_o", response was "yea easy to tell she had tits".

The redundant boobies are shorthand for non story people.

[sarehptar]

I don't agree that SE lacks 'tawdry males' as the OP says. If anything I think this game has some of the best variety in both male and females. The garleans will always provide heavily armoured villains, male and female. You have fully clothed, albeit still seductive villains like Yotsuyu, Tsukoyomi. Eikons have a wide variety of body types and clothing styles. Shiva, Sophia and garuda are scanty, but so are ifrit and titan. In both cases you have near naked, highly attractive males and females following the generally accepted norms for beauty (lithe, curved females and muscular, imposing males). For clothed you have Lakshmi, Titania, Ramuh.

Imagine being able to compare this


and this


to this


and this


with a straight face. Truly wild. Some of y'all really would find a rock sexy, I guess.

[Skivvy]

with a straight face. Truly wild. Some of y'all really would find a rock sexy, I guess.

I am digging the rock-hard abs. :3

[Tsumdere]

Some of y'all really would find a rock sexy, I guess.

Wait... you don't? I prefer them metamorphic rocks myself.